Broke
by Carebear Stare
Summary: The price of life is never too high. [AU, oneshot] [ part of the Words collection ]


**AN: Please review!**

Summary: The price of a life is never too high.

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A life for a life sounds fair. But of course it never is. It shouldn't be fair to the person who dies, but it usually is. In a trade of such large proportions, the life being offered should be volunteered. They choose to save someone else. Someone they love in some way.

It is unfair to the people who're left behind. There's someone to blame, but you can't blame them because your brother or sister or mother or father or friend or lover decided. Decided that that person's life was worth a great deal. It was worth their life. You can try and blame them. It's like suicide, isn't it? They said, yes, I will die, it is my choice. But then again, it's not really, is it? It's nowhere near selfish enough to count as suicide.

Fred was alone. She was sitting in front of five graves and she was alone.

They said they would give anything.

Anything in the world.

Winifred Burkle.

Angel knew about sacrifice. He knew about nobility. And he knew about love. The cost of love. He had given up everything for some he loved. He had given up the person he loved most in the world. And he had lost her. But she managed to come back. Then he lost his son and his oldest friend in one go. They both came back, if only for a short time. But he couldn't lose her.

To him she was a sister, mother and daughter all rolled into one. She annoyed him at times, stole his spot on the couch and took his mug. But she was there to be concerned, always asking if he was alright, pointing out his injuries and worrying about them. If Conner had been brought up by her he would've been all things wonderful. Angel had hoped some of Fred's brains might rub off on his son. And if not, she would always be there to help with homework. With her and Wesley, he was sure his son would be a genius. But things just don't work out that way. She needed protection too. There was a need to shelter her from harshness, even though he was well aware she was probably stronger than him inside. But he had saved her. When they first met he had saved her. And she had saved him. So many times without realising it. To him, she was the mix of hopeful naivety and belief that kept pulling them back together. And now, it was time for him to save her.

**Winifred Burkle.**

Charles Gunn knew about disappointment. He was _that _cliché. The one with the abusive father and the strung out mother who had to grow up way too fast. Only he had to fight vampires too. Which was, y'know, a little weird. But, he still carried the characteristic of expecting people to let him down. And they had. Every single person had. Angel for being something wrong. For being one of the something's that had taken away his sister. And for buying ballet tickets. Cordelia for leaving them. For leaving them so many times. Wesley for being stronger than all of them. But not strong enough to ask for help. Fred had disappointed him too. But now, he was determined to not disappoint her.

He was the first to offer his life. Maybe he'd figured it out by then. Maybe there was a feeling somewhere deep inside him, the odd nervous nausea that came when you were _pretty _sure you' done something wrong, only you didn't quite know what it was. And he had a lot to make up for. To him, Fred was an escape. As cliché as it sounded, to him, that was what she represented. Escape from what was expected of him. Escape to something better. She was his role model. Hadn't she left behind her small town Texan roots to become the polar opposite of a Texan housewife; an incredibly intelligent physics student? And along the way she had broken the stereotypes of pretty woman being stupid, as well as the assumption girls could only excel in "emotional" subjects. Through her, he saw endless opportunities. She was his window. Without her, would he still have to capacity to believe in the Gunn that wasn't just the muscle? Though she had instantly seen that was his roll in their family, she had always believed in him. Urged him to be more, to see himself as something else. To become what no one expected. Hope was running low. But he wasn't going to disappoint her. She was going to be saved.

**Winifred Burkle.**

Lorne was terrified. He'd heard her sing to Wesley. He knew what was coming. How that sweet girl wound die. It wouldn't be with dignity. Some one had once told him death is never dignified. The body breaks down, and your left gasping you last breath as weakly as a premature baby. He didn't want that darling of a person to die that way. He didn't want Wesley to be holding her. He didn't want it to happen. Call him selfish, but he wouldn't be able to cope without her. The world was ugly enough without one of the loveliest people he'd ever met leaving it.

He feared losing her. They all did, but for him, it was a little different. He'd left people behind before, people who hadn't loved him nearly as much as Fred was loved. And that had cut them in a place that never healed completely and wasn't treatable. He was scared of what would happen to them without her. Especially after they had lost Cordy. Without her they had become Wolfram and Hart. What would happen if they lost Fred? He was scared of how they would each shatter, until all was left was a pile of what used to be heroes. Fragments aren't enough to save the world. But, most of all, he was scared the she would never sing to Wesley again. The world was ugly enough already. He wouldn't let her leave.

**Winifred Burkle.**

Spike loved this girl. It was as simple as that. Maybe a part of him saw her as bit like another Dawn, to be protected, but respected. There was the poet in him shining through. She had him back from the brink. She seemed to save them all, without the heroics. Maybe it was just her. Some indefinable characteristic that made you want to do better for her. Like in that book, _A Cage of Butterflies. _The babies, locked behind the Wall, reflecting your natural characteristics back at you. So if you were even a half decent person you would be over come with the need to love and protect them. It wasn't manipulative, they just reflected what you felt, and gave nothing of their own. The Wall, after all, is almost impossible to breach. They all wanted to save her, and he understood, he couldn't be the one to do it. As much as he was a part of the group now, as much as he couldn't lose her, Angel's Avengers were the ones who deserved that honour. And he was going to make sure they got it.

Having a soul was harder the Angel had ever let on. The love and care fogged you up, but the grief crippled you. And the guilt. He was kinda used to the guilt now, if you could get used to that sort of thing, but he was yet to suffer the full blown grief of having someone dear to you die. He didn't know Anya had died. Buffy hadn't really mentioned it to Angel, it was only ever in reference to Xander. And Angel hadn't really known Anya, so he didn't think to pass it on. To be truthful, a big part of needing to save Fred was fear. He wasn't sure he'd be able to deal with losing her. It was a stupid saying really. No one would ever be careless enough to lose someone they loved. The person is taken from you. They slip away, no matter how hard you're clutching. But maybe, if he held on tight enough, he could hold onto her long enough for someone to be the hero.

**Winifred Burkle.**

Now, love someone is willing to die for is a strange and wonderful thing in this day and age. And by that I mean loving someone so much that you would die for them. Any parent would die for their child any day. But for their partner? Maybe, probably, of course. But when you get down to it, the real love is in people who've know each other and been married for years. And they usually have kids. So, they don't want their kids to grow up without them, and they want to be able to hold together the family if something, god forbid, happened to their spouse. So they might not die for their love, because maybe, they want to be left behind, to be able to keep loving the little people they made together. Between younger people who aren't married yet, real love is even harder to find. A lot of relationships are very superficial, and there's that incredibly selfish streak you'll find in teens and twenty year olds, that's hidden much better in older people. Real love is something that develops usually. There have been a few cases in history of real, pure love that's happened at first sight, but only a handful. Wesley loved Fred in the most pure and real way. It was a mixture of at first sight and knowing each other like they knew their own faces. And that more than anything else, was why he was not going to let her die.

Nine days. Two hundred and sixteen hours. He'd only had her for nine days. It wasn't enough time! Babies took at least nine months until they were born, and before that happened they needed to get married, and before that they needed to have a romantic life together. He couldn't have done that in nine days! So why didn't they warn him? A day left? At the most?

He hadn't even had the full two hundred and sixteen hours with her. It was more like two hundred hours, because they didn't sleep in the same bed for two days. Not that they'd…canoodled yet. They'd just spent night learning what the other looked like from another angle, curled together in arm chairs reading, or sleeping cocooned in love. It's hard to realise that the perfection you've finally realised is about to disappear.

She was failing. He could see that. He could see it better than most. Because from the moment he'd met her he'd studied her. Watching from afar never acting. _Why don't you get up off your post and start living life instead of just watching it? _He watched as he lost her for the first time. Watched as she went further away. And so he knew the signs. The way she was letting them see that she was slipping. That was what was scaring him.

And the prospect of losing her again.

Please, not again.

_Please!_

_I'll do anything!_

Anything?

**

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Would you give your life for hers? **_

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Yes. __

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Yes. __

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Yes. __

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Yes. __

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Yes. _

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And so the girl sat finally alone. Above her the tree caused light to dapple and pool around her, spotlighting the skin of her legs, outstretched. It danced on the tombstones.

She read the names, and wept, as she cursed meeting people who loved her too much.

The price of life is never too high for the hero.

For those left behind, the payment leaves an endless abyss.


End file.
